Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!cmcl2!brl-adm!adm!MAILER%ALASKA.BITNET@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU From: MAILER%ALASKA.BITNET@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU Newsgroups: comp.lang.c Subject: Undelivered mail Message-ID: <12336@brl-adm.ARPA> Date: 13 Mar 88 02:20:21 GMT Sender: news@brl-adm.ARPA Lines: 56 Subject: Re: Re: ANSI C idea: structure literals (and short constants) [Non-Deliverable: User does not exist or has never logged on] Reply-To: Info-C@BRL.ARPA Received: From UWAVM(MAILER) by ALASKA with Jnet id 9355 for SXJVK@ALASKA; Sat, 12 Mar 88 17:05 AST Received: by UWAVM (Mailer X1.25) id 6084; Sat, 12 Mar 88 18:03:46 PST Date: Fri, 11 Mar 88 21:29:56 GMT Reply-To: Info-C@BRL.ARPA Sender: Info-C List From: Henry Spencer Subject: Re: Re: ANSI C idea: structure literals (and short constants) Comments: To: info-c@BRL-SMOKE.arpa To: Vic Kapella > I fail to see that the committee has drawn and observed "need" as > a clear boundary for what should be standardized. They have tried. Sometimes they've let their enthusiasm run away with them; these are reprehensible lapses that should not be considered an excuse to others to do likewise! > > [expletive deleted] Speaking as a user and an implementor, this is an > > abortion if there ever was one. > > Thank you for the feedback. But I wonder if you would be so kind as to > elaborate on this comment... *Why* introduce a new notion of something that doesn't have a type (actually it does have a type, some sort of curious mix of the types of the things inside it) when it is easy to invent a syntax (or borrow the one from the GNU compiler) that specifies the type?!? > > ... probably the GNU compiler's approach, which avoids this > > hideous botch entirely. > > I wonder if you would mind summarizing that approach for those of us who > don't have access to that compiler's source code. As I recall it -- I have not studied the GNU compiler closely yet -- the technique used is a sort of "cast with an initializer". > At any rate, your comment seems to imply that this is existing practice, > so I am having trouble seeing why this is a topic that should not be > standardized. "Existing practice" means that it has been out there for a while, that people other than its implementors have used it at some length, and that it has been used for more than just toy programs. That does not happen overnight, the GNU compiler is very new, and the draft standard is (theoretically) in virtually its final state. -- Those who do not understand Unix are | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology condemned to reinvent it, poorly. | {allegra,ihnp4,decvax,utai}!utzoo!henry